Piercing glass pane with needle
The manoeuvre was captured with a Phantom v2511 camera The Slow Mo Guys/YouTube screengrab

A Shaolin monk has been captured in super slow motion showcasing one of the toughest martial arts manoeuvres ever – puncturing a pane of glass with a needle.

YouTubers Gavin Free and Daniel Gruchy, aka The Slow Mo Guys, invited three Shaolin monks to demonstrate the amazing stunt in the latest episode of their Super Slow Show.

Read more

While one of the monks held a pane of glass with a balloon placed behind it, the other, Master Feng Fei, stood a few metres away with a tiny needle in his hand.

After a little practice, he hurled the slender piece of metal fast enough to puncture the glass and pop the balloon behind it.

Though the entire exploit starts and ends in a split second, it can be seen in incredible detail thanks to The Slow Mo Guys.

The duo recorded the manoeuvre with their Phantom v2511 camera and the footage was later slowed down to almost 25,000 frames per second. This is so amazingly slow that you can not only see the needle being hurled like a shuriken (a Japanese blade) but also the shards of glass flying all over the place after its impact.

Shaolin monks have to master as many as 72 arts and hurling a thin needle fast enough to pierce glass is the toughest among them all, requiring at least 10 years of practice to channel all of their energy at the right place, one of the monks said in the clip.

From the physics aspect of it all, executing a move like this to perfection depends on three main aspects – the integrity of the glass, the mass of the needle and the speed at which it is thrown. While the first two elements are not known here, the speed is around the 150kmph mark, as per ScienceAlert.